This is the first of two articles whose genesis was the nexus of hurricanes and data visualisation. The second article, Part II – Map Reading, has now been published.
 
 
Introduction

This first article is not a critique of Thomas Pynchon‘s celebrated work, instead it refers to a grave malady that can afflict otherwise health data visualisations; the use and abuse of rainbow colours. This is an area that some data visualisation professionals can get somewhat hot under the collar about; there is even a Twitter hashtag devoted to opposing this colour choice, #endtherainbow.

The [mal-] practice has come under additional scrutiny in recent weeks due to the major meteorological events causing so much damage and even loss of life in the Caribbean and southern US; hurricanes Harvey and Irma. Of course the most salient point about these two megastorms is their destructive capability. However the observations that data visualisers make about how information about hurricanes is conveyed do carry some weight in two areas; how the public perceives these phenomena and how they perceive scientific findings in general ^[1]. The issues at stake are ones of both clarity and inclusiveness. Some of these people felt that salt was rubbed in the wound when the US National Weather Service, avid users of rainbows ^[2], had to add another colour to their normal palette for Harvey:

In 2015, five scientists collectively wrote a letter to Nature entitled “Scrap rainbow colour scales” ^[3]. In this they state:

It is time to clamp down on the use of misleading rainbow colour scales that are increasingly pervading the literature and the media. Accurate graphics are key to clear communication of scientific results to other researchers and the public — an issue that is becoming ever more important.

© NPG. Used under license 4186731223352 Copyright Clearance Center

At this point I have to admit to using rainbow colour schemes myself professionally and personally ^[4]; it is often the path of least resistance. I do however think that the #endtherainbow advocates have a point, one that I will try to illustrate below.
 
 
Many Marvellous Maps

Let’s start by introducing the idyllic coastal county of Thomasshire, a map of which appears below:

Of course this is a cartoon map, it might be more typical to start with an actual map from Google Maps or some other provider ^[5], but this doesn’t matter to the argument we will construct here. Let’s suppose that – rather than anything as potentially catastrophic as a hurricane – the challenge is simply to record the rainfall due to a nasty storm that passed through this shire ^[6]. Based on readings from various weather stations (augmented perhaps by information drawn from radar), rainfall data would be captured and used to build up a rain contour map, much like the elevation contour maps that many people will recall from Geography lessons at school ^[7].

If we were to adopt a rainbow colour scheme, then such a map might look something like the one shown below:

Here all areas coloured purple will have received between 0 and 10 cm of rain, blue between 10 and 20 cm of rain and so on.

At this point I apologise to any readers who suffer from migraine. An obvious drawback of this approach is how garish it is. Also the solid colours block out details of the underlying map. Well something can be done about both of these issues by making the contour colours transparent. This both tones them down and allows map details to remain at least semi-visible. This gets us a new map:

Here we get into the core of the argument about the suitability of a rainbow palette. Again quoting from the Nature letter:

[…] spectral-type colour palettes can introduce false perceptual thresholds in the data (or hide genuine ones); they may also mask fine detail in the data. These palettes have no unique perceptual ordering, so they can de-emphasize data extremes by placing the most prominent colour near the middle of the scale.

[…]

Journals should not tolerate poor visual communication, particularly because better alternatives to rainbow scales are readily available (see NASA Earth Observatory).

© NPG. Used under license 4186731223352 Copyright Clearance Center

In our map, what we are looking to do is to show increasing severity of the deluge as we pass from purple (indigo / violet) up to red. But the ROYGBIV ^[8] colours of the spectrum are ill-suited to this. Our eyes react differently to different colours and will not immediately infer the gradient in rainfall that the image is aiming to convey. The NASA article the authors cite above uses a picture to paint a thousand words:

Another salient point is that a relatively high proportion of people suffer from one or other of the various forms of colour blindness ^[9]. Even the most tastefully pastel rainbow chart will disadvantage such people seeking to derive meaning from it.
 
 
Getting Over the Rainbow

So what could be another approach? Well one idea is to show gradients of whatever the diagram is tracking using gradients of colour; this is the essence of the NASA recommendation. I have attempted to do just this in the next map.

I chose a bluey-green tone both as it was to hand in the Visio palette I was using and also to avoid confusion with the blue sea (more on this later). Rather than different colours, the idea is to map intensity of rainfall to intensity of colour. This should address both colour-blindness issues and the problems mentioned above with discriminating between ROYGBIV colours. I hope that readers will agree that it is easier to grasp what is happening at a glance when looking at this chart than in the ones that preceded it.

However, from a design point of view, there is still one issue here; the sea. There are too many bluey colours here for my taste, so let’s remove the sea colouration to get:

Some purists might suggest also turning the land white (or maybe a shade of grey), others would mention that the grid-lines add little value (especially as they are not numbered). Both would probably have a point, however I think that use can also push minimalism too far. I am pretty happy that our final map delivers the information it is intended to convey much more accurately and more immediately than any of its predecessors.

Comparing the first two rainbow maps to this last one, it is perhaps easy to see why so many people engaged in the design of data visualisations want to see an end to ROYGBIV palettes. In the saying, there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, but of course this can never be reached. I strongly suspect that, despite the efforts of the #endtherainbow crowd, an end to the usage of this particular palette will be equally out of reach. However I hope that this article is something that readers will bear in mind when next deciding on how best to colour their business graph, diagram or data visualisation. I am certainly going to try to modify my approach as well.
 
 
The story of hurricanes and data visualisation will continue in Part II – Map Reading.
 

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Notes

[1]	For some more thoughts on the public perception of science, see Toast.
[2]	I guess it’s appropriate from at least one point of view.
[3]	Scrap rainbow colour scales. Nature (519, 219, 2015) Ed Hawkins – National Centre for Atmospheric Science, University of Reading, UK (@ed_hawkins) Doug McNeall – Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK (@dougmcneall) Jonny Williams – University of Bristol, UK (LinkedIn page) David B. Stephenson – University of Exeter, UK (Academic page) David Carlson – World Meteorological Organization, Geneva, Switzerland (retired June 2017).
[4]	I did also go through a brief monochromatic phase, but it didn’t last long.
[5]	I guess it might take some time to find Thomasshire on Google Maps.
[6]	Based on the data I am graphing here, it was a very nasty storm indeed! In this article, I am not looking for realism, just to make some points about the design of diagrams.
[7]	Whereas contours on a physical geography map (see above) link areas with the same elevation above sea level, rainfall contour lines would link areas with the same precipitation.
[8]	Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.
[9]	Red–green color blindness, the most common sort, affects 80 in 1,000 of males and 4 in 1,000 of females of Northern European descent.

 

From: peterjamesthomas.com, home of The Data and Analytics Dictionary

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